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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Path-breaking rules under the Right to Education Act, in Gujarat

One major initiative of the Indian government, in the field of education, was the Right to Education Act of 2009. This act has major problems, as has been argued by numerous observers and experts in the field. This Act focuses on the interests of incumbent public sector education providers, instead of focusing on the interests of children and parents. It is focused on inputs into the educational process, regardless of the outcomes which are coming out. It penalises private schools that have weaknesses on inputs, regardless of the fact that these schools often induce better learning outcomes when compared with public schools.

At the same time, the translation of the Act into benign or malign outcomes critically hinges on the Rules under the Act, which are notified by State governments. Thus, now that Parliament has chosen to enact the RTE Act, the critical frontier that matters is how state governments choose.

In recent weeks, Gujarat notified its Rules for the implementation of the Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009. It has introduced some of the most innovative ideas for recognition of existing private unaided schools. The Committee in charge of drafting the Rules in Gujarat, that was headed by the former Chief Secretary Mr.Sudhir Mankad, has broken new ground in understanding the policy issues faced in education in India today.

Instead of focusing only on input requirements specified in the Act like classroom size, playground, and teacher-student ratio, the Gujarat RTE Rules put greater emphasis on learning outcomes of students in the recognition norms. Appendix 1 of the Gujarat Rules is the one which has a path breaking formulation for recognition of a school: this will be a weighted average of four measures:

Student learning outcomes (absolute levels): weight 30%

Using standardised tests, student learning levels focussing on learning (not just rote) will be measured through an independent assessment.

This component is introduced to ensure that schools do not show a better result in (1) simply by not admitting weak students. The effect of school performance looking good simply because of students coming from well-to-do backgrounds is also automatically addressed by this measure. Only in the first year, this measure will not be available and the weightage should be distributed among the other parameters.

Student outcomes in non-academic areas as well as feedback from a random sample of parents should be used to determine this parameter. Standardised survey tools giving weightage to cultural activities, sports, art should be developed. The parent feedback should cover a random sample of at least 20 parents across classes and be compiled.

This is one of the first times in India's history that public policy has focused on children and parents, instead of focusing on the public sector producers of education services.

Furthermore, the Gujarat RTE Rules have taken a more nuanced and flexible approach in other areas too. For instance, both class size and teacher-student ratio have not been defined in absolute terms, but in relative terms. The required classroom size is 300 sq feet but in case classrooms are smaller, then instead of re-building them, the Rules allow for a way to accommodate that with a different teacher-student ratio. The formula is: Teacher Student ratio = (Area of the classroom in sq feet-60)/8. This approach not only allows smaller classrooms to exist but also gives schools a more efficient way to manage physical infrastructure.

If a private school is unable to meet recognition norms, then the RTE Act de-recognises the school and forces it to close down. This sudden forced closure would create serious problems for the students and parents who would have to find a new school in the neighbourhood. The Gujarat Rules allow for the State to takeover the school, or transfer management to a third party, and create a genuine possibility for the school to continue and meet the norms. This, once again, shows the focus of the Gujarat Rules upon the interests of students and parents.

This approach is significantly better to that of the other states where recognition norms are based solely on input requirements and that are also rigid (like playground, classroom size and teacher-student ratio). The Gujarat approach recognises the substantial contribution made by budget private schools in urban and semi-urban areas where land and buildings are very expensive. Actually many government schools themselves would not be able to meet the rigid input norms that RTE has mandated.

Hi all, I am advocating for a new model that would attract private sector investment voluntarily into the education of the poorest children in India. It's been put out as a working paper on RePEc (2009/10) with the title: "Educating India's poorest: A radical plan to attract private sector investment.

Abstract: Despite its recent economic successes, India continues to have a vastunderclass where children do not go to school or are forced to drop out early. In this paper, I describe a new plan to attract “for profit” private sector investment into the education of our poorest and most vulnerable children who, given current realities, are unlikely to make their way out of the poverty trap anytime soon.

The idea is radical but at its core the plan is simple. Recognising that the private sector can work wonders when there is a profit motive involved, thispaper proposes that the Indian government should invite them to set upquality schools for India’s poorest with the incentive that as when these children grow up and start earning their livelihood, the income tax they pay to the federal government over their lifetime would go to the entity that nurtured and educated them.

The financial viability of the model under Indian conditions is considered at Appendix A (pp.12-17). Appendix B describes a workable mode—with returns toinvestors captured from future income tax payments—to attract corporateinvestment in financing college education for talented, but poor, American students.

Here is the link: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/23279/ (click on the download button for a pdf)

Excellent Idea to meet the financial crunch that the private schools are likely to face. Another idea could be to encourage corporate sector to discharge their CSR by adopting a few neighbourhood schools and funding or contributing to meet their RTE financial obligations. Its high time that MHRD thought of setting Think Tanks in every state to work out innovative ways in dealing with RTE. Given their 'penchant for excellence' the 4-5% private schools will do an amazing job of successful implementation of RTE, while the 95-96% government schools on whom the real onus of RTE implementation falls will continue to wallow in sub-standard learning condictions!

Thank you Rashmi. As your reply suggests, once you are ready to think away from the beaten track, there are other good ideas that could be pursued in earnest. Unfortunately, in the present environment, we seem condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. Pls do go ahead and read the full paper and yes, pls pass it on to others who may be interested.

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